


the meaning of flowers

by hypatheticallyspeaking



Series: Flowershop AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, flowershop au, it'll be more shippy later, to be part of a series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 02:26:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11117961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypatheticallyspeaking/pseuds/hypatheticallyspeaking
Summary: Katie Holt is a florist who just happens to get strange requests.





	the meaning of flowers

Katie Holt wrinkles her nose as she cleans the countertop, dusting off the pollen from the lilies she’s just cut and packaged. The orange dust clings to her fingertips and nearly everything around her. She’s grown up in this show, watched her mom sell flowers for years. That doesn’t change the fact that—she wrinkles her nose as she attempts to hold in a sneeze—she’s allergic to pollen. Blinking away the tears, she thinks she’s in the clear, and then she sneezes, high-pitched and vision-blurring.

If only she wasn’t the only one able to run the shop while her mom’s out of town, taking care of her grandparents for an undetermined amount of time, she would be at home, spending what is normally her free time relaxing. Instead, it’s like involuntarily taking a double shift for an undetermined length of time. She leans back against the front counter, sighing. She still has a while before she’s able to take her afternoon break.  

She taps her pen against the counter, drumming out a senseless rhythm against the wood. She’s had a decent number of patrons stop by her family’s shop throughout the day. She’s working on a small project, weaving some forget-me-nots into a flower crown—a prom request from the younger sister of a childhood friend. The flower crown of blue and green rests on the counter as she debates adding more blossoms for the pick-up the following day. The tapping of the pen stops suddenly as it flies from her hand, skittering behind the counter.

She ducks beneath the counter to pick up her pen. It’s wedged between two cardboard boxes and underneath another, and it takes a bit of maneuvering to reach it. It’s just in her reach, her arm at an awkward angle, when it slips from her fingers. She’s in the middle of a rather long string of curses when the bell on the front door rings, the tinkling sound echoing through the shop.

“Just a second!” Katie calls out, fingers catching the pen again, this time dragging it out from where it’s stuck. Standing up, she puts on her usual greet-the-customer smile. “How can I help you?”

To her surprise, the customer in front of her isn’t one of the usuals. It’s not even a high school student searching for last-minute prom flowers. The customer is a man, probably somewhere in his mid-to-late twenties like her, wearing a bright red sweatshirt. He’s got long black hair that doesn’t quite hide the tell-tale sign of a new bruise blooming on his left cheekbone.

He puts a fifty-dollar bill on the counter, using way more force than necessary. “How do you say ‘fuck you’ in flower?”

It takes her a second to process the request, “Excuse me, what?”

Sighing, he runs a hand through his hair. “I want to send flowers to the guy who punched me in the face.”

Katie can’t help making a face at that. “I’ve never had a request like that, but I’ll see what I can do.”

She doesn’t remember that much about flower meanings, but she’s able to pull something together. It takes her about half an hour of mixing and matching flowers, debating geraniums and hyacinths to represent constant stupidity. She throws in a few other small flowers without any special meaning that she knows of until the flowers begin to shape a fairly decent arrangement. She tosses in a few stalks of wisteria with the hope that whoever is receiving these flowers will get the picture since the purple flower means serious devotion.

He watches her intently the entire time, his blue eyes focusing on her as she works. He honestly doesn’t seem like a bad guy. And this seems like a fun prank. Assuming this is a prank.

“Is this okay?” she asks, before wrapping the bouquet.

He nods, a grin forming on his face. “Perfect,” he says, and he looks almost childish in that moment. It’s rather cute. “Do you have a flower delivery system?”

She turns away to finish wrapping the flowers and hide her simultaneous blush. “Not typically. I’m sure I could figure something out.” She gently places the bouquet on the counter.

He shakes his head. “I’ll figure it out. You don’t need to worry about it.”

Katie smirks at that. “Yeah. But now I’m curious about why someone would want to send a ‘fuck you’ bouquet. Would me delivering this on my break help at all?”

He checks his watch. “I know his shift starts at three at the precinct.”

She grins, giddy. “You’re strange, you know that?”

“You’re the one who wants to help me send these flowers to Lance.”

“This is a prank, right?” She probably should have asked that earlier.

The guy smiles, shoving his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. “Yeah. He has it coming though.”

A shrug. Who is she to interrupt arguments? Especially when she’s had her fair share of petty ones with Matt over the years, and those have resulted with worse things than negative flowers.

She arrives at the precinct he told her about around four-thirty, bouquet in hand. She drops the flowers at the front desk for “guy named Lance” and decides to hang around under the guise of being able to tell the customer his reaction. The receptionist drops the flowers off on the desk of a tall and stereotypically handsome officer—albeit one with a black eye. She sees the man from the flowershop sitting across from him, an eyebrow arched in surprise.

“Somebody got me flowers!” Lance declares, showing them off to everyone.

A mustachioed man coughs, smirking. “You do know, that’s an offensive bunch of flowers you’ve got there. Whoever sent it must think you’re stupid.”

“What?”

Katie can barely withhold the laughter that threatens to burst from her lips, and she raises a hand to cover her face. She forgets that she’s got pollen on her hands, and she wrinkles her nose in an attempt to avoid sneezing.

“Sucks,” the guy from the flowershop says in a deadpan drawl. Even she knows that he’s holding in laughter as he smirks.

“Keith! This was you!” Lance looks like he’s about to throw down in the middle of the bullpen, and she takes that as her cue to leave.

On her way out, she meets Keith’s eye, and she can’t help smiling.

She passes through the front door and makes it to her car before she sneezes.

Somehow, it seems worth it.

Maybe running the flowershop isn’t quite as boring as she’d thought. Maybe she’ll see him again, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr: @spacedorksandlions!


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